14 DAY TRIAL // A few days ago, the first two segments destined to piece together the main mirror on the NASA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were delivered to the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), in Greenbelt, Maryland. The image above shows engineers inspecting it for damage.
The main mirror on the space observatory will comprise a total of 18 segments, which are all built and tested by the Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation. The company will continue to deliver segments to the GSFC over the next 12 months, until all have been transferred.
At this point, the mirrors are undergoing reception and inspection procedures, before they are attached to the JWST backplane structure, which will be their primary support and link to the large telescope.
These are the most advanced mirrors ever constructed. They are, for all intents and purposes, perfectly flat, and only display atomic-scale deviations from a perfect horizontal.